Sunday, November 14, 2010

Tour de Gruene

I took a break from my lackluster cross racing to do an annual favorite, the Tour de Gruene TT. The 3 previous years I have competed in the team time trial but never in the individual time trial. This year I decided to compete in both despite my recent lack of form.

Saturday was the individual TT. It was an out and back course on River road that is part of the team time trial course so I had ridden the out before but never done it backwards like the back leg. This was also my first attempt at pacing on a TT with power. (my other attempt on the State TT ended prematurely due to a blown tire). I started out and it felt like a slight uphill with a tailwind so I tried not to use to much energy on the out leg. I felt slow so at the turn-around I started to push it a little more. There were a lot of riders on the road and some cars as well with a speed limit of 25 mph. This made for a lot of rabbits to chase and I finished the back leg strong and my numbers showed I did a good job of managing my power output. I finished with a time of 38:02 and an average speed of 25.2 mph. This won my age-group/class.

Sunday was the two man team TT that I did with Clint Fiedler. This was my first year with Clint but he's a beast so I hoped I could hang with him. Through the beginning of the ride I felt good and we kept a good pace all the way through the hill. The hill felt especially long and hard this year and I tried to keep a good pace without pushing to the point of blowing up. After we got over Clint recovered fast and started doing a lot of work but I wasn't feeling as strong. The winds were also tough and every turn in the front gust would move you around on the road and make you white knuckle it a bit. We approached the final few turns and Clint who had done the majority of the work those last few miles moved over so I could pull through. I tried to pull but had nothing left. Clint came back around and finished strong but I couldn't grab his wheel and blew up as I was within sight of the finish line. I limped across the line and we finished with a 1:06:40 with an average speed of 24.6 mph for 3rd in our age group/class.